I have been quite happy trolling here in the Economist under a nom-de-keyboard for more than three years now. I feel comfortable but I am well aware that I am responsible for what I write down in case it is offensive - which I care not to be.
I like it this way. I appreciate reading through other people's posts whenever I have the time to. Some posters have thought-provoking points-of-view and I keep their names by heart. Sanmartinian is my leading guru. I also like the American tribesmen of all colours and partisanships. They are outspoken and frank and that's not bad when it's just that. Some in fact are too trollsome but you can always jump those ones through.

I think it is a horrible idea to force us to use Facebook to comment. The level of comments here at The Economist is already much higher compared to the rest of the web newsmedia. If you have problems with spam and trolls, reserve the comment field to paying subscribers.

I also think that real name comments will dumb down the debate. If every comment you ever made can come back and bite you years later when you apply for a job or something similar, people will be paranoid and refrain from expressing their views. One critical comment about Microsoft -> say goodbye to that open senior job position at MS in your home town five years later. One critical comment about the Tories -> no promotion to director seven year later in a company that is dependent on government contracts. A pro-Iraq war comment from 2003 -> risks of murder if you move to a job in the Gulf region ten years later.

We must distinguish between real anonymous and 'anonymous as author' of comment but perfectly identifyed to the magazine, forum, etc. There must always some possibilty to trail the path towards the source of a comment.

The second kind is in my opinion the proper way to make comments useful as a tool of informal opinion and exchange.

Reasons to favour anonimate in front of other users are of diverse. First of all, as others said, it is not the same to be named John Smith or Evaristus Mackintikosky. It is clear that emiting oppinions with your name as John Smith is as anonymous as using an alias.

Which are the reasons for somebody two shun being identifyed as author of a comment?. There are lots an none of them is being a troll an avoiding consequences.

First, comments are not letters to the editor. You can emit a comment as an informal way to see what it looks like and which anwers arouse your opinion. You are not sure and you can guess and check answers. So you can be a little more risky than in a formal 'letter to the editor'. In other words, informal comments offers to people some kind of brain-parallel computing. You emit an opinion and other eager minds read that input an emit other outputs. This is a very important thing to preserve.

Other reason is not willing to be identifyed easily. Imagine you own a bakery in a town. You want to emit an opinion about politics or economy. If you have to put your name in a comment about a matter you are not 100% sure, you risk being labelled by prospective clients and your opinions be linked with what you do for living. So, ' he is saying that because...wathever'.

At last there are people willing to share and contrast opinion who, on the other hand, are too shy and hate seeing their name written in a public place.

Finally, I come back two my 'parallel braing computing' idea and emit the hipothesys. Maybe it is just that some powerful people want to prevent just that. Such a powerful tool to share opinions.

Imagine you are a somebody very wealthy and powerfull. You pu money an effort to create opinion in favour of your interests and to make people who oppose to them as dumb stupids. Of course you can't help disliking the idea of seeing a comment 'nonsense' attached to your efforts. You want the author of this 'nonsense' identifyed and facing the social pressure. You don't want 1000 'Recommend' or 'I like it' because that 'nonsense' + 1000 can be more powerful thant lots of 'I like it' as far as somebody else and then another somebody else can prefer the 'Recommend' attached to 'nonsense'. All that will cost you more money or even your success.

So, maybe what is tried to be prevented is a very powerful tool in favour of free thinking.

I beg to differ, I know of numerous ficticious identities (either a second account or a single account under a pseudonym or nickname). This doesn't count the plethora of pets and fictional characters. Facebook may insist on using one's real identity, but there is little or no enforcement of this policy.

I am all for civil discourse. I don't mind not being anonymous. Many content generating types would prefer a standardization and rating system, while not wanting any one group to have too much power or control. It's ridiculous to say that it must be an anonymous web, or one verified and representing a literal real world. It can be both; we have public parks and we have private gardens? Why the dichotomy? People should be allowed to turn into a ghost in certain parts of the internet and have anonymous conversation. But for the most part, we need some control to legitimize the conversations... and I am all for people having to be accountable to their words and actions.

My real concern here is how simplistic it is... and I really would love to know Mr. Zuckerberg might read these comments (unlikely), because i think he is being a bit simplistic.

I do think that his he negates the complexity of the roles we play as humans trying to adapt to online arena's. I have two FB profiles.. because my larger network doesn't care about my djing or weird art crap. Period. I am not the same person to everyone. I will not swear around my mom as I might with my chums. Soccer Mom and Girl's Night Out Mom might not have the same audience. We all have different real world roles... why would Facebook & the social internet not account for that? Facebook has been really myopic with the fact that we play many identities. Work and Personal, as another example. Family vs. close friends, yet another.

Some of us are like Atticus Finch and treat everyone the same way always... but that's not practical, I think. Facebook "groups" are not an answer to this problem. But we should have different suits or layers of personalities we should be able to overlay.

I dislike this bc I HATE POLITICS ON FACEBOOK (friendship and politics rarely go hand and hand). Moreover as many have noted, my employer does not need to know my politics.

Moreover, while sites like poliitco, yahoo news and cnn have just atrociously nasty nasty comments which might make one favor an end of anonimiity, the wall street journal (in theory) makes people use their real names and there is all types of racist stuff on there so...

While the article has a veneer of healthy skepticism, a sub-textual analysis shows that The Economist has been 'Zucked in', as so many have, by Phacebook's warped world view. It is wrong, and somewhat sinister, to label as "purists" those who lament the end of privacy under Phacebook's practices. Anonymity is a universal habit of people living in the real world; it is unnatural to give it up so willingly online as Zuckerberg inists we do.

I control a number of domain names. This costs me approximately $500 annually for registration and hosting services. I recover some of this through one of my companies reselling hosting to clients desiring tighter control over their own domains. Something the "free" hosting firms do not offer.

Why do I do what many consider to be unnecessary and complex? So that I can have multiple "identities" not linked to one another. Does this guarantee my privacy? Not a chance, it only eliminates the direct linking of email addresses to user names and other information. I have been involved with computers and related technologies for so long that I have developed a healthy respect for both the good that can result, as well as the evil. Some consider my thinking to be deeply paranoid. Each to their own. My choices do however add another layer (OK, numerous layers) to protect my personal information.

A side benefit of my efforts, I am able to track relatively simply the intertwined nature of organizations purporting to be independent when they are in fact anything but.

Corporations, in the name of increased profits, are continually creating shiny new names/brands/products/etc. out there as if they were truly new names/brands/products/etc. They aren't. Corporations seem to forget their efforts can be traced back to the source using the same technology. The corporations (including governments) adopt the tried and true "cost/benefit" analysis and most frequently go with the cheapest methodology. I have identified many trends, often months and sometimes years before the general public becomes aware, if they ever do.

Within the various blogs and forums I am involved with, both participatory and controlling, trolls are a continual issue. A relatively minor issue. I specifically encourage people to NOT provide "real" names or information when registering. I want people to express their true ideas and feelings. Something people will not be inclined to do if they think they can be easily tracked.

Tracking of people costs money. "They" want to lower costs by and increase revenue by reducing complexity and using common points of reference. Using one email address is one such example. Tracking usernames, IP addresses, and other pieces of information all work to build profiles.

Choosing to "muddy the waters", so to speak, by using multiple and varying information generates profiles that are unreliable. They either don't use them or waste time and money chasing after "customers" using inaccurate mailing lists, whether physical or virtual.

Receiving multiple identical emails from supposedly unrelated sources proves my efforts are not in vain and my beliefs are not "out there".

Mark Zuckerberg may WANT all users to adopt their real names on Facebook, but er...that's not actually happening. E.g. my facebook friend-list includes one "Major Rasputin". It's also pretty easy to change your account name multiple times. Another friend decided to celebrate April Fool's by changing his Facebook name to Charlie Sheen.

Were The Economist.com to adopt the facebook comments service, it would become far easier for Major Rasputin or Charlie Sheen to comment on this or any other article- they wouldn't even have to set up a separate account to do so! Quantity of comments would probably go up. Not sure about quality.

The Economist writer made a subjective, maybe even naive, association between the reduction of heckling comments and Facebook's troll busting power, giving FB much undeserved credit.

The reality is: FB has no control on who's really behind any of its account names. Any one can have multiple FB accounts, and they do. Some of the names are blatantly phoney, on the order of, for example, Felix Meow and Fido Barc. Many of my FB friends use multiple, fictitious names; these accounts have been created primarily for enhancing e-game opportunities.

Instead of chasing rainbows, why don't you investigate and write about the devastating effects of character bashing and rumor mongering created by Facebook as a result of its peculiar social platform and instant news feed system - the ultimate peephole into your bedroom (aka your Facebook Wall) which broadcasts every twitch and every move a FB user makes, bar none.

If the Economist were to attempt to strip posters of their anonymity by requiring that the login via Facebook, I for one would cease posting here.

But what I might also do is fund the setting up of a parallel website -- call it EconAnon -- in which the article headlines of the Economist could be indexed/cached, and posters could post anonymously their comments on the very same articles.

That would teach the Economist very quickly the perils of anonymity stripping maneuvers, and I would enjoy monetizing a substantial portion of what used to be the Economist's web readership.

Funny that the Economist has the practice of keeping anonymous the identities of its journalists writing each Economist article.

I generally don't comment much, but I've been noticing the new facebook comments option on bottom of some of the websites I've recently been visiting. As with a previous article about internet anonymity in TE this whole move is disquieting. While trolls may be a problem, I'd much rather accept that as the price for anonymity on the internet. The problem with using facebook to comment means everyone knows what articles you read, and comments you made (friends employers etc.). It is especially diquieting as it can quickly become means of self-censoring, or make people consious about how friends etc. in the real world might view this, thus moderating opinion.
While I like facebook as a means of keeping track of friends, as a virtual and dynamic adress book so to speak,I'm do not look forward to the day it gains enough momentum that to participate in the internet requires you to hand over your privacy or be part of facebook.
It would be interesting to see how people are coping with this however. My observed experiences have seen friends use different names and have multiple accounts (the real one is for employers while the other allows people they care about to communicate with them)etc.
I also think this proposed system of facebook from the commenters perspective increases the audience the comment has to be adressed to from simply the relevant discussion board to one's entire friends circle and all that might do is make every comment politically correct and not necessarily meaningful.

I think it's important to highlight that having an identity with a provider outside of Facebook is still a valid identity. Identity is also important in context. Who your network is in a work context may be very different that who your network is in a casual context, and Facebook has not yet successfully bridged that gap for most people. Data highlighted in a recent Wall Street Journal article shows that on B2B sites for example, a significant number of people prefer to use the online identity established on LinkedIn http://networkeffect.allthingsd.com/20110207/multiple-identities-in-acti...

Although it doesn't usually make sense for people to use false names on Facebook, there's nothing to stop them doing so. At least one of my Facebook friends is using a false name. There are many children on Facebook who give false dates of birth.

Facebook was set up for people to get in touch so of course it uses real identities. Same thing with Linked in. Their purpose is for people to connect with each other or network. Its not an integrity issue.... it just doesn't make sense to use a nom de plume.

The same thing is not true for discussion boards where people don't necessarily want to get in touch with others. And if they decide to there's often a private message function. So Zuckerberg's argument doesn't hold for much of the www. Its a vehicle for him to get more users onto Facebook though....if much of the web is closed to those who aren't.

I don't know what proportion of commenters on these boards use Facebook. If I were to guess I'd think the core user demographics are different and it could be quite low - certainly less than for TechCrunch. TE could be quite surprised in the fall off of comments if it joins up with Facebook.